TOM FITZGERALD — Ephemeral Lexicon

interview by Paul O’Reilly, Sheila Deegan; essay by Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith 

ISBN 978 0946641 680      24pages (paperback)    22.5x24.5cm     13 illus

This book documents a highly personal work by the artist, a moving memorial to his parents, and a more general meditation on life and death. In the course of the interview, Fitzgerald discusses scale and structure in sculpture, explaining how much he enjoys having the construction methods employed visible to the viewer. He talks about his use of materials, their symbolic connotations, how certain combinations create exciting possibilities for him, noting also a spiritual dimension to his work. He discusses the issues that he occasionally addresses in his work, his interest in language and communication, his abiding concern for the identity and integrity of matter, and his desire to give it a voice.

EXTRACTS

"In this new installation, my work has become more architectural. It also demands more audience participation. There is an element of risk attached to Part I of Ephemeral Lexicon. It’s something I considered when making it ... The making of the ramp, then, was more to do with my own interests as a sculptor than something specific to my father, although, as the work progressed, I found ways of referring to his involvement in gardening through the use of text, references to glass houses, pathways, etc. I like the way things are made and constructed and formed in the real world, and often use these methods very visibly in my work. I don’t like hiding construction methods in sculpture. I remember being very disappointed once in Rosc 84, looking at a massive construction by a well-known British sculptor. It was made of heavy wood beams, and I wondered how it was held together, whether it was depending on gravity or being slotted and jointed. I examined it very closely and I found these thick bolts running down the middle of it. I was disappointed. I didn’t see any reason for hiding them. It took away the reason for making the work."

— Tom Fitzgerald in conversation

"Ephemeral Lexicon is a work of two complementary parts. The first is entitled My Father’s Saw. It pays respectful homage to the achieved life of a consummate craftsman and gifted gardener. Its most prominent element is a long, raised wooden ramp paved with marble slabs and bordered by two narrow metal troughs filled with leaves. Each of the twelve slabs is inscribed in serif capitals with the name of a flower: tulip, marigold, narcissus, rose, crocus, daffodil... They are the names of flowers recalled from the artist’s childhood, flowers he remembers his father planting and tending. This botanical litany has an undeniable incantatory power. Fitzgerald has filled the grooves of the individual letters with beeswax as a token of yet another of his father’s talents, that of beekeeper. The cut paving slabs are thus both stepping stones and markers. They serve as a rudimentary guide through some of the byways of a fruitful life. The serif capitals suggest the overt formality and permanence of a public monument. They contrast poignantly with the disjointed phrases which have been cursorily scribbled on the gradually decaying leaves that line the walkway’s two sides. These were gleaned from Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come, that moving exploration of the often painfully fraught relationship between father and son. Torn from their original setting, these orphaned phrases function here as votive offerings, fragile and transient. Though undeniably heartfelt, their clipped urgency wryly indicates that communing with the dead can be every bit as faltering and frustrated an experience as communing with the living..."

— from the essay by Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith